The bankruptcy filing caused a halt in Ford Transit Connect production

While the electric vehicle (EV) industry seems to be moving forward in many ways, it has also experienced some setbacks over the last year. Unfortunately, many of these setbacks involve EV batteries, and now, Ford is in the same boat.

Azure Dynamics filed for bankruptcy on Monday, and was forced to lay off 120 employees worldwide. Layoffs occurred in Boston, Michigan, Canada and the United Kingdom.

In addition to layoffs, Azure Dynamics said it will no longer proceed with a planned stock offering because the company just doesn't have the liquidity to move forward with an appeal of a ruling that opposed its planned stock offering.

"We wish to convey to the company's stakeholders our terrible sadness at this outcome," said Azure Dynamics in a statement.

Azure Dynamics received a four-year contract from the Government Services Administration for about $112 million. The contract gave the U.S. military and government agencies the ability to order the Transit Connect EV, and Azure said it had about 2,200 orders. In addition, Azure was attracted to Michigan because of the state tax credit, which is over $1.7 million over a seven-year period, and an 11-year local tax abatement approved by the city of Oak Park valued at $55,400.

On Ford's side of the situation, the bankruptcy means having to stop production of the Transit Connect EV, and it's currently unclear if this situation will be temporary or permanent.

So far, Ford has produced 500 EV Ford Transit Connect vehicles since 2010, when it began its partnership with Azure. Despite Azure's recent news of bankruptcy, Ford is standing behind the company.

"Our priority is to ensure that Azure's Transit Connect Electric customers continue to have support throughout their ownership experience," said Wes Sherwood, Ford spokesman.

Azure definitely isn't the only EV battery company (or alternative energy company) to file for bankruptcy within the past year. In January, EV battery maker Ener1 filed for bankruptcy after its subsidiary, EnerDel, received a $118 million Department of Energy grant in August 2009. Other EV battery issues that have occurred recently include General Motors' Chevrolet Volt, which experienced a series of battery fires last year, and problems with Fisker Automotive's Karma plug-in hybrid batteries, which will be replaced entirely by A123 Systems Inc. for $55 million.

Other failed alternative energy companies that have filed for bankruptcy include solar panel company Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the government despite warnings of Solyndra's viability, and Beacon Power, which received nearly $43 million from the government in August 2010 and filed for bankruptcy in November 2011.

I love how you get people posting oh oil companies paid huge taxes, to the U.S. Where if you actually read into it, you find they paid little to a drop in the bucket to the U.S. IRS, and pretty much all of that profit tax burden was in foreign countries. In 2010 Chevron paid -$18 Million in U.S. Income taxes, $230M in state and local gas sales taxes. The rest of their tax burden? The other $7.8B was to other countries where they drill oil, such as those in the middle east. Exxon Mobile, paid -$156M or should I say got a large refund from the IRS. Paid $110 in state and local per gallon sales tax. By the the way, did anyone not realize you can claim state and local taxes as a write off on your federal taxes? Apparently corporations are counted the same as an individual for this. The other $15B was to foreign countries. Oh by the way, US tax code allows companies to write off there international tax burden as a deduction too.

So, are we not subsidizing oil companies? The only reason these green companies failing after receiving federal loans, is to make the president look bad. It's the paid agenda of others paying off the press to do so. Wonder how much of that money is coming from oil companies? Much like the thing with the Volt fires. So they vehicles started on fire after the crash tests.... As apposed to catching on fire at the scene of an accident burning those trapped in the vehicles, due to an unshielded ruptured gas tank and a random spark or hot tail pipe. Yet we still drive gasoline vehicles every day with that risk.

Mathos, you are correct the large oil majors pay a large %, sometimes well over 50%, some over 75% of their total tax burden to foreign countries.

However, some of these countries are obligated to pay royalty costs simply to drill or mine (tar sands) oil deposits overseas. This is in addition to any income taxes paid, VAT, and other taxes. As I mentioned to Bob from LI. Exxon paid $108 billion in total taxes in 2011, $95.7 billion was to foreign governments and $12.3 billion to the US. There 10-k doesn't breakdown the tax burden between the oil exploration / production vs the chemical, pipeline, and retail gas and wholesale ops, but I gotta imagine most of the non-pass through taxes were from the oil exploration segment.

Could the U.S. increases taxes on the oil industry in the U.S. - probably ? However, they will only pass these taxes onto the consumer whether we like it or not.